Tomorrow, When the War Began

Title: Tomorrow, When the War Began
Author: John Marsden
Publisher: Pan Macmillian Publishers
Year: 1993
Series: The Tomorrow Series #1
Genre: Adventure, Science Fiction-Dystopia

Plot Summary: Seven Australian teens decide to go camping out in the bush in a place called Hell for a few days. One night, a some of them wake up to the sound of military jets flying overhead but dismiss it casually. The teens then return home to find that their pets are dead, the food in their refrigerators rotting, and their families are gone. It becomes clear that something happened to their families during the towns Commemoration Day, and that outside forces have invaded their town, starting a war. The teens then must decide whether to flee back to Hell where they can be safe, or to fight back in the hopes of rescuing their families.

Opinion: I thought that this was an amazing book about self discovery and the need to work together. John Marsden reminds me a bit of film maker Christopher Nolan, in that he can take what seems like a bizarre scenario and make it feel utterly real. Even though I live in a different country than the teens in the book, it was written so well it made me feel something like this could happen to my neighborhood (especially with today's foreign policy and our US economy). Marsden did a wonderful job as a male author writing from the perspective of a young teenage girl. Usually when men attempt to write female characters they fail miserably, but not once in reading it did I ever think about the fact that Ellie was written by a man. One thing that many young adult authors, or any authors in the adventure/action genre is they forget to include the emotional toll it takes on a person to kill someone, but Marsden did not do this. The main character Ellie, kills three soldiers in self defense but seeing the dead/dying soldiers that she killed affects her profoundly, probably for the rest of her life. That to me was one of the best aspects to the book and what made it feel realistic was the reality that even if you kill someone in self defense, it is still a life taken and something that will haunt you for the rest of your life.

The fall from innocence was a great theme, the teens had to learn how to take care of themselves in a war zone within a matter of hours; they had to grow up and rely on each other and their instincts in order to survive. The fall of innocence is also present in the teens' realization of the capacity for evil and how this other strange nation invaded them and killed people for the basic principle of they needed more land for all of their own people. At first the teens do not understand this concept, but then realize that the enemy had to have found a justification to commit this harm and in return, the teens must find their own means to justify an attack against their enemy.

I am surprised that this book has been out since the early nineties and that it was never recommended to me before. I in turn recommend this book for you to read. I give it a 4 out of 5 stars. Next I'll be watching the Australian film adaptation of the book.